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How expensive will Blanche Lincoln's vote be?
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
11/20/09 2:48 PM EST
Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln has the toughest line to walk on her party's health care plan in the Senate.
Up for election next year, Lincoln is facing a possible primary challenges from the left and right in her party -- a conservative state Senate president and a liberal lieutenant governor.
There is a strong field of Republicans that may produce a tough challenger if she shape to take her on if she makes it through.
The latest polls show Lincoln in serious jeopardy -- President Obama's low approval in Arkansas of 41 percent looks robust compared to Lincoln's anemic 27 percent.
Lincoln may not be able to pull off a win no matter how she votes on health care, but there's reason to believe that a vote for the plan will seal her fate.
We still haven't heard how Lincoln will vote Saturday on the question of whether to allow Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's health plan into the upper chamber for an eventual vote.
One of the other red-state holdouts, Sen. Mary Landrieu, is on board after the Reid bill was written to include a $100 million payout to her home state -- what Republicans are calling "the second Louisiana purchase" (it should be noted that the first one only cost $15 and came with the Mississippi River).
With no margin of error in the 60-vote Democratic caucus, every member has a veto vote on the measure to start debate Saturday and the subsequent measure to stop debate before a final vote.
Lincoln's vote will be the hardest. Other members may be more conservative or come from redder states, but she is the only vulnerable Democrat facing reelection in 2010. She can be the most demanding of any of Reid's fellow Democrats.
While she might ask for a similar home-state largesse as Landrieu, that might not suffice for someone as vulnerable as Lincoln. She more likely needs an escape hatch.
I polled some veterans of the Bush administration and the Senate who agreed with my hunch that the best way to help Lincoln is for President Obama to make her secretary of agriculture.
Secretary Tom Vilsack is probably almost ready to start plowing the fields of the lobbying business and a stint setting national agricultural policy would make Lincoln, already the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, extra popular with the big players in her home state.
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